A comprehensive guide to Ripping

Welcome to a guide on how to do your own rip investigation. The term ripping refers to the infringement of other's works.

If you are a member:

There are two ways you can handle someone who you suspect is ripping.

1) You can spam their thread with mindless abuse

2) You gather as much evidence as you can and you contact a member of the GFX team

So lets get to it. Here are some tips on how to spot a ripper (in the order i think you should you should carry them out).

1) This method catches easily more then 50% of rips. Tineye. Paste in the direct image location and it will search a relevtivly large database of images.

2) If your tineye is not sucessfull, proceed to step 3. Check out the image results on tineye. Look for key items, such as web URL, date posted and names on the tag.

For example, some image URLS will be part of someone's image portfolio and it may have their name in this address. This is not however a damming piece of evidence, as many people are known under different alias.

Date posted is not always conclusive evidence either, but if the date is a while back and the suspect has posted "i have just made this" etc. then you can be fairly sure.

A username on a piece of work again can go either way. Gifts are very common and the user may (in rare cases) have gone back and changed the PSD. Look on both images for traces of cloned areas or gaps where a name used to be.

3) At this stage you either have some pretty damming evidence, or your tineye result was fruitless. In this case you should either get a GFX member to contact the member to provide a screenshot of PSD ownership, or very kindly ask for proof.

4) Now it is in the hands of a GFX member and/or you are awaiting an explanation from the suspect. Never should someone be convicted without a chance to prove themselves innocent.

If you are a GFX member/Mod (some applies to members):

1) Do the same as a member and i'd also recommend you ask another reputable member for their view on the situation.

2) If the user has provided some evidence in their defence then these are some things you should question:

Look closely at a screenshot of a PSD file. More specifically the file type of the document and the layers. If the image is PNG and it has layers then you can be sure that they were put there in an attempt to make it look like the original file.

If it's possible, ask the suspect how they created a certain element (tool or technique used).

If they claim to have followed a tut, then ask them to provide part of that tutorial or a preview. Some may be disclosed to provide a full tutorial, and this can be understandable.

3) Now to the punishment. One should take extreme care when enforcing this. It does nobody any good to instantly ban them on a first offence. After all we want to expand the GFX community not be seen as evil individuals. When i was mod, my rule was 1st strike: Warning, 2nd Strike: ban. The ban length would depend on the disruption caused by the ripping. Offer them a second chance, tell them that they can never get better if they pretend to be someone they are not. A ban is the last resort and should not be the goal of your investigation.

And remember, everyone should be treated fairly as you would expect to be treated.

Mods, GFX members are there as support. Ask them if you are unclear. You can also contact myself, although i'm only a third party individual and i cannot guarentee results or resolution.

Inspire, Encourge and Create,

Energy

P.S. Please only question my views if you have read the full post. Thanks. For the older members of this community, social interaction plays a large part in this whole process. I will not go into that this time.

I've seen countless rip cases in my time, and have dealt with many to know how to easily identify a rip. I have also seen the greater majority of released PSD Packs, Resource Packs, LRO PSDs, and Tagwalls, and I can easily track down the piece, if it was a "popular" piece.

if evidence shows that he ripped, rip his balls off, tear them into pieces, put them in blender to be sure, freeze them , replace with eyesballs, dip in soy sause and vinigar ( tastes horrible ugh ) then make him lick it then put it back in place .

if evidence shows that he ripped, rip his balls off, tear them into pieces, put them in blender to be sure, freeze them , replace with eyesballs, dip in soy sause and vinigar ( tastes horrible ugh ) then make him lick it then put it back in place .

dude WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! nah man u feed em to some killer whales and make them watch